Observe how and when your teacher closes his or her lessons and/or activities. How does he or she end each class period? Is there a set routine? If so, describe it. Pay special attention to when you teacher begins to end the class. Does he or she return to the purpose or main idea of the lesson? Does he or she "set up" the homework or the next day's activity? Is the teacher still teaching when the bell rings or are students already poised to leave? Is there some "dead time" at the end of the class period? If so, how much? How do students react to your teacher's closing strategies? Remember that these questions are a guide and that you don't have to answer each one. Be sure you reflect on your observations and describe how you will try to end your classes. What supports for these ideas might you include in your lesson plans?
Observe: From what I have observed from my cooperating teacher, she likes to end the class with the students in their seats, and she reiterates the homework to them. She makes many of the classes take out their agendas and write down their homework this way they can't use the excuse that they didn't know they had any. She usually ends her lessons or labs about 5 minutes before the end of class so she can restate the homework. After she is done with this many of the students just sit around because there is only a few minutes left in class, but this necessarily isn't dead time. She always tells the students that just because she is not inf ront of the class teaching that this is not down time, the students always have homework which they can be working on or an upcoming quiz or test that they could be studying for. If the students don't take advantage of this time then she tells them that she will start teaching until the bell, and this usually motivates them to open up a book. My teacher definitely uses this tiem at the end of the period to constatly remind them about upcoming tests, and homework. Many of her students are not studying for their tests and quizes, so she likes to give them this 5 minutes at the end of class to use to review their notes from the day. She urges for her students to study more for her tests because the grades are not exactly where she wants them, but in soem cases the students are trying to just simply get by on what they remember from class.
Reflect: When I have my own classroom I will be implementing a strategy that I learned in my EDC 448 class. During this class Mrs. Mcguire taught us that using "exit slips" is a great way to end the class. "Exit slips" are just a sentence or two long that the students write on a piece of scrap paper which they then hand into the teacher as they leave the classroom. The sentence can be something they learned in class that day, something they would like to learn, something they liked, or something they disliked about that class period. This will be a good way to also get some feedback from the students on whether they enjoyed the lesson or not. So in my class I will be stopping about 4 or 5 minutes early and trying to review the main points of the lesson. After this is accomplished I will be reminding the students of the homework and any upcoming quiz or test ( which will also be written on the board) and finally I will have the students filling out their exit slips to end the class. This is something that I would like to do every single day, but in some cases when labs are extremely in depth I may not be able to get to the exit slips, but I do feel like getting the students into a routine would be the best thing for keeping the order in the classroom. Many times when students have that downtime at the end of the class is when the discipline problems begin to occur. Keeping the students active with work is one of the best strategies for classroom management.
Observe: From what I have observed from my cooperating teacher, she likes to end the class with the students in their seats, and she reiterates the homework to them. She makes many of the classes take out their agendas and write down their homework this way they can't use the excuse that they didn't know they had any. She usually ends her lessons or labs about 5 minutes before the end of class so she can restate the homework. After she is done with this many of the students just sit around because there is only a few minutes left in class, but this necessarily isn't dead time. She always tells the students that just because she is not inf ront of the class teaching that this is not down time, the students always have homework which they can be working on or an upcoming quiz or test that they could be studying for. If the students don't take advantage of this time then she tells them that she will start teaching until the bell, and this usually motivates them to open up a book. My teacher definitely uses this tiem at the end of the period to constatly remind them about upcoming tests, and homework. Many of her students are not studying for their tests and quizes, so she likes to give them this 5 minutes at the end of class to use to review their notes from the day. She urges for her students to study more for her tests because the grades are not exactly where she wants them, but in soem cases the students are trying to just simply get by on what they remember from class.
Reflect: When I have my own classroom I will be implementing a strategy that I learned in my EDC 448 class. During this class Mrs. Mcguire taught us that using "exit slips" is a great way to end the class. "Exit slips" are just a sentence or two long that the students write on a piece of scrap paper which they then hand into the teacher as they leave the classroom. The sentence can be something they learned in class that day, something they would like to learn, something they liked, or something they disliked about that class period. This will be a good way to also get some feedback from the students on whether they enjoyed the lesson or not. So in my class I will be stopping about 4 or 5 minutes early and trying to review the main points of the lesson. After this is accomplished I will be reminding the students of the homework and any upcoming quiz or test ( which will also be written on the board) and finally I will have the students filling out their exit slips to end the class. This is something that I would like to do every single day, but in some cases when labs are extremely in depth I may not be able to get to the exit slips, but I do feel like getting the students into a routine would be the best thing for keeping the order in the classroom. Many times when students have that downtime at the end of the class is when the discipline problems begin to occur. Keeping the students active with work is one of the best strategies for classroom management.